


A Wake Up Song

by Abby_Ebon



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Dreams and Nightmares, M/M, Mentions of Taylor Swift, Penny Swears A Lot, Penny To The Rescue, Psychic Abilities, Quentin Has Nightmares, Roommates, just kisses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-10
Updated: 2016-03-10
Packaged: 2018-05-25 23:43:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6214897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Abby_Ebon/pseuds/Abby_Ebon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Quentin has vivid nightmares that Penny experiences and helps him coop with.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Wake Up Song

*-*-*-*

The first time it happened, Penny had woken up to Quentin sobbing, his mind a mess of mental institution horrors and Fillory. Penny lay in bed and breathed, glancing to the bed beside his, Quentin shuddering under a thin sheet, oblivious to all but his inner demons.

“Fuck, man.” He ran his hands though his hair, eyes shut tight and opening again. Penny couldn’t really blame Quentin, not for this. This had been done to him – by Julia, Quentin’s best friend before Brakebills for fucks sake, and that evil hedge bitch witch Marina and…someone else, someone at the party…someone in the school. Someone that Quentin would probably trust at a party.

“Shit.” Penny shivered, not from cold, his skin prickling like he was being watched. He knew that Dean Fogg and the Professors knew what he’d guessed. If they were taking steps to protect Quentin and the rest of them, Penny hadn’t seen a sign of it.

“Go back to sleep.” Penny tells himself, the room and Quentin’s unconscious mind and only because he knew it’d help Quentin sleep did he hum something Taylor Swift he’d heard from Quentin’s head before, about being Out of the Woods or something. He’s got to get Quentin to listen to some better music soon.

Only when Quentin is quiet does Penny turn over and fall back to sleep.

*-*-*-*

Penny wakes from Quentin’s next night’s nightmare to silence. He doesn’t know why exactly that is at first, this nightmare was as fucked up as the last. Fillory –dark and strange -and some solemn Jane Chatwin chick and Quentin’s dad dying because of a tumor curtsey of the Beast and somehow Penny being caught by the Beast. Quentin had been – still was - torn between saving his dad and Penny – a Penny who’d been trapped in Fillory like that other traveller.

Penny’s annoyed to have played a damsel in distress to Quentin’s magician, but better that it was Penny and not Alice. Penny wanted to see as little of that as he could get away with. Still, he’d almost prefer wet dreams or something sappy and romantic or kinky to waking up like this, panicked and full of cold sure fear.

He glanced around in the dark, no shadows moved and nothing stirred but the breath coming heavily out of his chest. He still felt the weight of fear heavy on his chest. Penny narrowed his eyes at Quentin’s still form, a creeping fear coming over him as he watched that quiet and unmoving body.

“Breathe, damn it.” Penny was turning toward Quentin’s side of the room, propping himself up for a better view of his roommate, alarm washing cold over his skin.

Only because Penny was watching carefully did he see Quentin’s side rise and fall. He took a shuddering breath, shoving his fingers into the blankets to convince himself to lie back down. Penny didn’t want to imagine Quentin dying in that kind of nightmare, helpless, confused and terrified. Penny took another breath turning away from Quentin, staring up at the ceiling as he felt guilt sting at him.

If Quentin had lost himself in that nightmare, had died without waking – and Penny had left him behind to just wake himself up and get away. That…that was Penny’s own fear, ever since Quentin had sung that Taylor Swift song just to get Penny’s attention while trapped in a nightmare illusion –and it’d melded with that girl the Beast held. That he’d have to leave someone behind. That he couldn’t save them because of his lack in power or weakness in understanding it.

Quentin wasn’t dead and that was enough, he didn’t need to shake him awake to be sure. He could feel Quentin’s dream impressions, thoughts racing, and the whisper of visions.

“Why can’t you just dream of kid-friendly Fillory and some kind of happy ever after?” Penny asks the dreaming Quentin, and he shouldn’t do that.

Crazy people talk to themselves. Crazy people talk to people who aren’t awake like they are and try to help voices screaming for help. Penny has more in common with Quentin than he wants to ever admit, Quentin’s dream mental hospital hadn’t been the first one he’d seen – but Penny wasn’t crazy, in that he and Quentin were kindred spirits.

Quentin’s mental problem hadn’t been hearing voices or screaming - it had been feeling too much of the truth and conditioned self denial, caught between a cage of social control and fantastically unrealistic freedom. Even here, Quentin feared not belonging, and Penny couldn’t blame him – Penny knew what kind of magician he was, but no one knew what kind Quentin was yet.

Penny rolls his eyes, feeling the tug of Quentin’s feelings like a whirlpool, swirling cold confusion and fear. He thinks of some Taylor Swift song, singing the words to Everything has Changed, wondering how he’s come to this – how trying to find real music to introduce to his roommate yesterday ended up with him knowing more Taylor Swift lyrics than he had ever wanted to know.

Still, Penny can’t say it doesn’t work, singing Quentin into a deeper sleep, singing the nightmares away; this is a small thing he can do to get back to sleep without worrying about falling into Quentin’s nightmares again. It works better than telling a kid a bed time story.

Penny chuckles, knowing this is a secret between them that he won’t tell – and Quentin can’t. He goes back to sleep sure that at least he won’t have to worry about nightmares.

*-*-*-*

It's the third night and the third nightmare when Penny wakes up half surprised when he doesn’t smell himself burning alive from the inside out, his magic out of control and consuming him. He brings his hand to the front of his face to be sure, it shakes a little, but it’s not smoking or flaring blue beneath the skin, and it proves to Penny that he’s no niffin.

Quentin screams out a plea, and Penny scrambles out of bed, twisting to face the door, his hands steady and ready with a spell unspoken – but it’s the middle of the night and Quentin isn’t awake. He’s screaming in his dreams.

“Quentin.” Penny says, bleakly, feeling helpless against Quentin’s anguish. Penny knows he doesn’t –can’t - mean this much to Quentin, it’s a dream of loss, that’s all. Penny’s known all his life how much or how little he’s meant to others – it’s the curse of his gift, he hears thoughts even if he shouldn’t – or couldn’t bear to.

Quentin thrashes against the covers on his bed as if wrestling against an enemy, he struggles and Penny can see the tears running down his cheeks. Penny goes the side of Quentin’s bed, staring down at him and hearing Quentin cry out again within his mind where no one else can hear, demanding Penny answer.

“Q, damn it, wake the fuck up man.” Penny feels a flutter of fear that this time he won’t be able to wake Quentin – or sing him back to sleep. It makes him reckless; he reaches out and shakes Quentin’s shoulder, Penny is hit with the backlash of how helpless and afraid Quentin had been as the Beast had stroked his face with warm hands.

“Not this time you sick fuck.” Penny hisses as if the Beast is in this room between Quentin and him. Maybe he is – these kinds of nightly terrors for three nights in a row can’t be normal. Quentin has claimed to have seen a Jane Chatwin in dreams, telling him things, maybe the Beast had found its way into Quentin’s dreams the same way she had.

“Quentin, you’re here with me, you hear? Now wake up.” Penny snarls, digging his fingers in as if he can yank Quentin’s mind to awareness. Quentin opens his eyes, sees Penny alive, safe and not a niffin and throws his arms around Penny as if he’s an anchor in a storm. Penny’s too surprised to shrug him off or shove him away. Quentin’s relief is like the tide, undeniable. Penny’s rarely felt something so wholly welcoming.

“Thank you.” Quentin says, and means every word. People so rarely speak their minds honestly. It’s something that Quentin’s always done, and it at first drove Penny nuts, trying to find out why he wasn’t lying. Usually if someone was so seemingly honest, they were hiding something- from themselves if not to anyone else. Quentin didn’t, not really, and from Penny he couldn’t.

“I…I’m sorry, Penny.” Quentin comes back to himself, aware that Penny is dangerous and bigger and strange. Penny almost regrets waking him up. It stings, how foreign Quentin sees him as. He tries not to take it personally, after all, Quentin isn’t like him – not psychic and not a traveller and white - even if he was like Penny, it wouldn’t make things easier.

“Why?” Penny asks, and something of his face makes Quentin recall the illusionary mental hospital and the Penny there, and Penny hates it – how that Penny had snitched on Quentin about not taking his pills – how that Penny forced Quentin to swallow them – had been happy with a Quentin drugged and out of the way and fed food he claimed to like best – how that Penny had talked like English was as foreign to him as Quentin’s feels about his chances of truly fitting into the world.

“Stop it, that’s not me.” Penny shudders away from it, but there isn’t any escaping Quentin’s thoughts, they are as unavoidable as cold in winter.

“I..I know that, Penny, it’s me. It was all me.” Quentin reaches out and before Penny knows what he’s doing, because Quentin’s careful not to think about it, he grasps the back of Penny’s head, gently cradling it. It keeps Penny still as he glimpses the happily obvious Elliot-Quentin, wanting pills in exchange for any affection – the Alice-Quentin desperate to escape reality.

The Dr. London-Quentin knowing all along how none of what Quentin is normal, the father-Quentin’s very real fears of hurting himself and others, and how that Penny-Quentin hadn’t been Penny at all, but how Quentin felt about himself – knowing the truth about the pills he didn’t take, denying a truth outside of them, at once his own keeper and the most foreign feeling among many, not knowing much of the language that surrounded him or how best to interact.

If there was something Penny was good at, it was communication – he had to be. So he understood. It still didn’t change how Quentin saw him now – someone bigger, stranger, and dangerous.

“What about how you’re thinking now?” Penny asks, and Quentin tilts his head looking from Penny’s feet to his where Quentin holds head. Quentin sees his strength and his height as dangerous because Quentin remembers bullies. Penny knows that feeling well, he’s been scared; he’s been bullied enough for being different.

“And…strange?” Penny raises a brow, and Quentin thinks about Elliot, about Penny, and about James – his former best friend Julia’s boyfriend, how Quentin had liked him, how James had teased Julia and Quentin about three ways. Quentin had wanted that, but Julia had claimed that feeling was strange. Penny hisses at Quentin’s thoughts and memories of Julia, they are full of pain – and longing.

“She really screwed you up, huh?” Quentin nods, looking up at Penny as if he wants something, and they understand each other as Penny nods. When Quentin pulls him down for a kiss, Penny doesn’t resist it, welcomes warm lips and tongue slick and hot, dragging along his teeth and the roof of Penny’s mouth. Penny hisses and pulls away. Feels the sting of Quentin’s hurt, the fear of his rejection and the “what’s wrong?” that he doesn’t say.

“You and Taylor Swift, I swear, don’t make me regret this with lyrics about being 22.” Quentin looks so nice blushing and Penny can't help but pull him in for another, longer and lingering, kiss.


End file.
